Ali Bastian, who has been in soaps Hollyoaks and Doctors, had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy following her stage II breast cancer diagnosis last year
Ali Bastian, pictured at the BAFTAs in May, said earlier this year she was cancer free(Image: Getty Images)
Former Hollyoaks star Ali Bastian said her body is “under construction” as she opened up about her cancer journey.
After Ali was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer last year, the 42-year-old actress underwent gruelling chemotherapy and had a mastectomy. However, she delighted fans in March this year by revealing she had overcome the disease, statistically the most common cancer in the UK.
Speaking in a podcast this week, Ali said: “I couldn’t have a reconstruction at the time because we always knew I’d have to have radiotherapy. At some point there’ll be some kind of something.
“Initially I was like 100 per cent it’s happening. But now, I want to have the conversations and talk through what the options are, but I’m not actually married to any of them at the moment.”
READ MORE: Hollyoaks’ Ali Bastian reveals she’s cancer free after surgery in emotional update
The actress was diagnosed with cancer in September last year(Image: alibastianinsta/Instagram)
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Ali, 42, said she found it challenging to always feel like a ‘fighter’(Image: alibastianinsta/Instagram)
The actress, who portrayed Becca Dean in Hollyoaks from 2001 to 2007, gave the update on the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, presented by Giovanna Fletcher. Giovanna, 40, asked Ali how she handled her recovery so far, to which Ali said: “In some ways better than I would have imagined actually, even the sort of gearing up for a mastectomy. I’ve got a really good prosthetic that makes a big difference. It means in clothes I feel normal. It’s bright pink. It makes me happy.
“It’s just very different to the lump of silicone that you get handed in the hospital, which is a hell of a moment. This is a lot lighter and easy to wear. I quite like that it doesn’t look like a chicken fillet, like a pretend boob. It’s something that I could show the kids as well because it’s so visually appealing.”
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Ali had a regular role in BBC soap Doctors in 2019 but left to have her first of two children, both of whom are girls. Since starting a family, she hasn’t had a majpr acting credit but she told Giovanna she is looking to the future. The star, from Windsor, Berkshire, added: “I just keep saying to myself really ‘I’m still under construction, I’ve been through a lot, I’m healing at the moment.'”
The soap star, who came third in the 2009 series of Strictly Come Dancing, lost her mum in 2023, one year before the cancer journey started. Earlier this year, Ali, who has also been in The Bill, told fans her mum had a short illness.
Meerut, India – The last of the paint had begun to peel off Mohammad Mohsin’s house two years ago. The faded green, white and yellow paints on the walls still bore stains from last year’s monsoons.
A narrow, 3-foot-tall (0.9 metres) passage only possible to enter by crouching, led from the kitchen into a courtyard lined with buffalo dung, a rusting scooter, and a creaking cot in northern India’s Meerut district, about 100km (62 miles) from New Delhi.
“We will get the house painted when it’s finally wedding time,” Mohsin had said, leaning on an iron shovel, when Al Jazeera visited him in February earlier this year, referring to his sister Aman’s wedding plans.
But the date for the wedding came and went – without it being solemnised.
In 2023, Mohsin had borrowed roughly $1,440 under the Indian government’s Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme. “Kisan” means “farmer” in Hindi.
Launched in 1998, the KCC initiative is intended to modernise rural credit by providing accessible, short-term, low-interest credit to farmers for agricultural expenses, thereby replacing exploitative private moneylenders.
Issued against land holdings, the KCC operates like a revolving credit line, allowing farmers to borrow at the start of a crop cycle and repay after the harvest. With a modest interest rate of 4 percent annually, the scheme is among the most accessible financial instruments for millions of farmers.
But for years now, the KCC scheme has deviated from its original purpose. Farmers in rural India, where agriculture barely sustains families and where dowry in marriages is the norm, have used KCC loans as a convenient but dangerous alternative to family income.
The KCC money Mohsin borrowed in 2023 from a state-run bank’s local branch was not meant to sow sugarcane or buy fertiliser. He always meant to use it for his sister’s dowry: Aman’s prospective in-laws had demanded a Maruti Wagon-R car, a larger Mahindra Scorpio SUV, and hundreds of thousands of rupees in cash, when the marriage was planned.
KCC looks and can be used like a regular credit card, including for cash withdrawals. Clutching the family’s KCC card issued in his father Mohammad Kamil’s name, Mohsin withdrew the money from an ATM and went straight to a car dealer in Meerut to make the down payment for a Wagon R car.
In February 2025, Aman’s proposed marriage collapsed under a new set of dowry demands. By now, Mohsin was already in significant debt and had no money to sow crops, or invest in seeds or farm machinery.
He was also saddled with the car he had bought for the groom. He missed paying the monthly instalments a few times. When farmers fail to repay during a crop cycle, the interest rate jumps from 4 percent to 7 percent, which is what happened with Mohsin.
He now repays the loan in small instalments, but knows that he will be playing catchup for years. And the longer he delays his payments, the higher the risk that the loan could be classified as a non-performing asset (NPA), damaging his credit rating and future borrowing capacity.
Meanwhile, 22-year-old Aman finished Fazilat, a seven-year course in Islamic theology offered by Darul Uloom, a prominent Muslim seminary in Deoband, about 80km (50 miles) from Meerut. The course is considered the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree from a regular college.
Aman’s family has also resumed its search for another groom. “I will get married when the right family agrees,” Aman told Al Jazeera.
But families do not just agree. They negotiate – and dowry is the currency. Tens of thousands of Indian women have been killed by their in-laws over dowry demands. In 2024 alone, India saw a dowry-related death every 30 hours, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.
“In our part of the world, no dowry means no groom,” Aman’s 60-year-old mother, Amina Begum, told Al Jazeera, sitting in one of the corners of their sparse home.
Once a groom is finalised and the new dowry demands are negotiated, Mohsin will need cash again. And he may have to rely on the KCC scheme, again.
But a new KCC loan cannot be sanctioned until the previous one is fully repaid. The only way around this involves local middlemen who help farmers repay the interest on existing KCC loans, and get the principal renewed in the bank as a fresh loan. In exchange, these middlemen charge an interest rate as high as between 2 and 5 percent per day.
The result: If Mohsin gets another KCC loan sanctioned, he will need to use that to also repay the middlemen who helped him get it – perpetuating the cycle of indebtedness he is trapped in.
Mohsin at his home near Meerut in India [Ismat Ara/Al Jazeera]
‘System breaks your dignity’
India’s farmers receive limited state support for unexpected or heavy personal expenses, such as hospital bills, children’s education, social obligations, or even weddings – often forcing them to rely on informal credit or agricultural loans meant for farming needs.
For instance, India’s public healthcare spending is among the lowest globally, consistently under 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The limited resources put a significant strain on poor families in cases of medical emergencies.
As a result, across India’s agrarian belt, mainly in the north, the KCC scheme is being drained to plug life’s emergencies, exposing a deep rural distress.
A farmers’ union leader and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India, Vijoo Krishnan, says that in addition to weddings, farmers are increasingly using KCC loans for healthcare and education. This diversion of money leads to what Krishnan calls a “development debt trap”, where farmers are forced to take on loans just to meet basic survival needs, rather than to invest in productivity or growth.
A 2024 study published in The Pharma Innovation Journal, an Indian interdisciplinary publication that also features research in agriculture and rural development, found that only a fraction of KCC loans go towards agriculture. About 28 percent of the KCC-holding farmers who were respondents in the study said they used the fund for household needs, 22 percent for medical expenses, 14 percent for children’s education, and nearly 10 percent for marriage-related expenses.
“Farming barely pays enough to sustain a family,” said Mohammad Mehraj, the former head of Mohsin’s Muslim-majority village of Kaili Kapsadh. “If there’s a medical emergency or a wedding, the pressure is too much.”
The fear of repayment haunts farmers, rooted in the deep shame that failure brings. Everyone has heard the stories. “In a nearby village, a man in his forties was declared a defaulter. His name was read out in the village square. The shame was so unbearable that his wife moved back to her parents’ home,” Mohsin recalled. The man in question, he says, has not been seen since. No one knows if he fled, or if he is even alive.
Mohsin lives with the same fear. “The system doesn’t break down your door, it breaks your dignity,” he said. In small villages with close-knit communities, a bank official’s visit to the house to seek repayment of loans is seen as an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs.
“I’d rather starve than have a bank man knock on our door,” said Mohsin’s father, Kamil, who is in his 70s, his voice barely above a whisper. Around him, others nodded in agreement.
To escape shame, farmers like Mohsin rely on the middlemen who charge a steep interest rate to help them renew KCC loans without settling the principal.
Thomas Franco, a former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers’ Federation, said that while schemes like KCC have expanded credit access for farmers, they have also created a debt trap.
“At the harvest time, many farmers, already burdened with earlier debts, are forced to take additional loans. Loans intended for productivity often get diverted to meet immediate social obligations,” he told Al Jazeera.
By 2024, the Indian government’s official data shows that the KCC scheme had disbursed more than $120bn to farmers, a sharp rise from $51bn in 2014.
But those numbers mask a more complex reality in which banks become a part of the serial indebtedness crisis, while showcasing high numbers of loan disbursals, Franco said.
“The loans get renewed every year without actual repayment, and in the bank’s books, it shows as a fresh disbursal, even though the farmer does not get the actual funds. This exaggerates the success numbers,” he said.
Meanwhile, as India’s farmers find themselves buried in mountains of debt, many are taking their own lives.
In 2023, Maharashtra, India’s richest state, contributing about 13 percent to the country’s GDP, reported the highest number of farmer suicides – at 2,851. This year, Maharashtra’s Marathwada region is one of the worst hit. In the first three months of 2025 alone, the region recorded 269 suicides, marking a 32 percent increase from the same period in 2024.
In neighbouring Karnataka, between April 2023 and July 2024, 1,182 farmers died by suicide, primarily due to severe drought, crop loss and overwhelming debt. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, farmer suicides rose by 42 percent in 2022, compared with the previous year. Similarly, Haryana, also in the north, reported 266 farm suicides in 2022, up 18 percent from 225 in 2021.
Critics argue that without deep structural reforms aimed at providing better public welfare systems for farmers and their families, such as affordable healthcare, quality education, and reforms to make farming profitable, schemes like the KCC will remain short-term solutions.
Jayati Ghosh, a leading development economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that India’s agricultural credit system is fundamentally out of sync with how farming works.
“Crop loans are typically structured for a single season, but farmers often need to borrow well before sowing, and can only repay after harvesting and selling. Forcing repayment within that narrow window is unrealistic and harmful, especially when farmers lack the support to store crops and wait for better prices,” she said.
Ghosh, who co-authored a 2021 policy report for the Andhra Pradesh government and has studied agrarian distress for more than three decades, told Al Jazeera that key Indian financial institutions – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank and NABARD, the apex rural development bank – were to blame for treating agriculture like any other commercial enterprise.
“The failure lies with NABARD, the RBI and successive governments. Agricultural lending needs to be subsidised, decentralised and designed around real conditions in the field,” she said.
Schemes like the KCC, she said, are built on the flawed belief that cash alone can solve rural distress.
“We’ve built a credit system assuming farmers just need money. But without investment in irrigation, land security, local crop research, storage and market access, loans won’t solve the crisis,” she said.
Mohsin (left) and a cousin survey their fields while wondering whether farming has any future at all in India [Ismat Ara/ Al Jazeera]
‘I wonder if farming even has a future’
The KCC scheme has also been riddled with controversies, with multiple loan scams surfacing across India in recent years.
In Kaithal, a town in northern Haryana state, six farmers used forged documents to secure nearly $88,000 in loans, which ballooned to $110,000 before detection, due to accrued interest over time after the farmers failed to repay them.
In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, agricultural dealer Mohammad Furkan, in collusion with a bank manager, created fake bills and ghost loans worth $1.2m in 2014, earning him a three-year sentence in March 2023.
In Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state where Meerut is located, three State Bank of India managers sanctioned about $792,000 in fraudulent KCC loans between 2014 and 2017, using forged land records and fake documents. The federal Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) booked them in January 2020 after an internal bank inquiry. The matter is still being probed.
Yet, bank officials say that despite years of scams and red flags, the KCC scheme continues to suffer from weak oversight.
“There’s no systemic check in place,” said a loan disbursal agent affiliated with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), who has been processing KCC applications in rural Uttar Pradesh for more than a decade. He spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
But even if the KCC was cleaned up and all scammers punished, it would not solve the problem, say some farmer leaders.
“This is not about debt. It’s about dignity,” said Dharmendra Malik, the national spokesperson of the Indian Farmers’ Union, a prominent group. “You can’t solve agrarian distress with easy loans. You need investment in irrigation, storage, education and guaranteed prices for the crops.”
Back in Kaili Kapsadh, Mohsin’s buffalo stood tethered in the courtyard, swatting flies with its tail. It is worth $960 and, in this village, that is a status symbol, akin to owning a vintage car in a wealthy urban suburb.
But prestige does not pay back loans. Mohsin has not been able to renew his family’s KCC loan, worth about $1,500, for more than two years. He is still repaying the last one.
Each harvest yields the same bitter crop for him: more bills and losses. Looking at his sugarcane fields, already browning under a harsh sun, he said: “Sometimes I wonder if farming even has a future.”
Nigerian singer Ayra Starr marked a career milestone at the 2025 BET Awards, taking home the Best International Act award, her first-ever win at the event on Monday night.
The 21-year-old Afrobeats star, who had led all African nominees with three nominations, was up for Best Female R&B/Pop Artist, Best New Artist, and Best International Act. While Starr lost in the first two categories to SZA and Leon Thomas respectively, her win in the international category signalled growing global recognition for her sound and rise in the music industry.
Her victory was a standout moment on a night where other Nigerian nominees were left disappointed.
READ ASO: [Ojude Oba] When Culture Meets Style, Connects Generations
Tems captivates audience at Aston Martin F1 Livery unveiling in London. Photo: @astonmartinf1/Instagram
Tems, another strong Nigerian contender, was nominated twice in the BET Her category for her tracks Burning and Hold On from her debut album Born In The Wild. The award was ultimately claimed by Summer Walker for her emotional single Heart of a Woman.
Shallipopi, known for his street-hop sound, was nominated for Best New International Act, while Rema was also in the running for Best International Act, but neither artist clinched the win.
The ceremony, held at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles and hosted by comedian Kevin Hart, was dominated by U.S. acts particularly hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar, who swept up five major awards.
Lamar won Album of the Year for GNX, Best Male Hip Hop Artist, Video of the Year for the viral Not Like Us, Best Collaboration with SZA on Luther, and Video Director of the Year, shared with longtime collaborator Dave Free.
WInner of Album of the Year with “GNX” US rapper songwriter Kendrick Lamar speaks on stage during the 2025 BET Awards at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles on June 9, 2025. (Photo by Michael Tran / AFP)
Chris Brown was named Best Male R&B/Pop Artist, while The Best Group award went to Future and Metro Boomin for their joint album.
Rapper Doechii won Best Female Hip Hop Artist and used her acceptance speech to highlight ongoing protests outside the venue.
“As much as I’m honoured by this award, I do want to address what’s happening right now outside of the building,” she said. “There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order.”
She concluded to a standing ovation: “We all deserve to live in hope and not in fear… and we protest against it. Thank you, BET.”
And in one of the night’s most talked-about wins, the daughter of Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Blue Ivy Carter received the YoungStars Award
On the film and television front, Cynthia Erivo won Best Actress, and Denzel Washington added another accolade to his long career as Best Actor. The musical biopic Luther: Never Too Much took home Best Movie.
Meanwhile, Angel Reese claimed the Sportswoman of the Year award, while NFL quarterback Jalen Hurts took home Sportsman of the Year honors for his standout season.
FULL LIST OF WINNERS – BET AWARDS 2025
Album of the Year
$ome $exy $ongs 4 U — Drake & Partynextdoor 11:11 Deluxe — Chris Brown Alligator Bites Never Heal — Doechii Cowboy Carter — Beyoncé Glorious — GloRilla WINNER: GNX — Kendrick Lamar Hurry Up Tomorrow — The Weeknd We Don’t Trust You — Future & Metro Boomin
Best Female R&B/Pop Artist
Ari Lennox Ayra Starr Coco Jones Kehlani Muni Long Summer Walker WINNER: SZA Victoria Monét
Best Male R&B/Pop Artist
Bruno Mars WINNER: Chris Brown Drake Fridayy Leon Thomas Teddy Swims The Weeknd Usher
Best Group
41 Common & Pete Rock Drake & Partynextdoor Flo WINNER: Future & Metro Boomin Jacquees & Dej Loaf Larry June, 2 Chainz, The Alchemist Maverick City Music
Best Collaboration
“30 For 30” — SZA feat. Kendrick Lamar “Alter Ego” — Doechii feat. JT “Are You Even Real” — Teddy Swims feat. Givēon “Beckham” — Dee Billz feat. Kyle Richh, Kai Swervo, KJ Swervo Bless — Lil Wayne, Wheezy & Young Thug “Like That” — Future & Metro Boomin & Kendrick Lamar WINNER: “Luther” — Kendrick Lamar & SZA “Sticky” — Tyler, The Creator feat. GloRilla, Sexyy Red & Lil Wayne “Timeless” — The Weeknd feat. Playboi Carti
Best Female Hip Hop Artist
Cardi B WINNER: Doechii Doja Cat GloRilla Latto Megan Thee Stallion Nicki Minaj Rapsody Sexyy Red
Best Male Hip Hop Artist
BigXthaPlug Bossman DLow Burna Boy Drake Future WINNER: Kendrick Lamar Key Glock Lil Wayne Tyler, The Creator
Video of the Year
“3AM in Tokeyo” — Key Glock “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — Shaboozey “After Hours” — Kehlani “Denial Is a River” — Doechii “Family Matters” — Drake WINNER: “Not Like Us” — Kendrick Lamar “Timeless” — The Weeknd feat. Playboi Carti “Type Shit” — Future, Metro Boomin, Travis Scott & Playboi Carti
Video Director of the Year
Anderson .Paak B Pace Productions & Jacquees Benny Boom Cactus Jack Cole Bennett WINNER: Dave Free & Kendrick Lamar Dave Meyers Foggieraw Tyler, The Creator
Best New Artist
41 Ayra Starr BigXthaPlug BossMan Dlow Dee Billz WINNER: Leon Thomas October London Shaboozey Teddy Swims
Dr. Bobby Jones Best Gospel/Inspirational Award
“A God (There Is)” — Common & Pete Rock feat. Jennifer Hudson “Amen” — Pastor Mike Jr. “Better Days” — Fridayy “Church Doors” — Yolanda Adams feat. Sir The Baptist & Donald Lawrence (Terry Hunter Remix) “Constant” — Maverick City Music, Jordin Sparks, Chandler Moore & Anthony Gargiula “Deserve to Win” — Tamela Mann “Faith” — Rapsody WINNER: “Rain Down on Me” — GloRilla feat. Kirk Franklin, Maverick City Music
Viewer’s Choice Award
WINNER: “Residuals” — Chris Brown “Denial Is a River” — Doechii “Nokia” — Drake “Like That” — Future & Metro Boomin feat. Kendrick Lamar “TGIF” — GloRilla “Not Like Us” — Kendrick Lamar “Luther” — Kendrick Lamar & SZA “Brokey” — Latto
Best International Act
Any Gabrielly (Brazil) WINNER: Ayra Starr (Nigeria) Basky (UK) Black Sherif (Ghana) Ezra Collective (UK) Joé Dwèt Filé (France) MC Luanna (Brazil) Rema (Nigeria) SDM (France) Tyla (South Africa) Uncle Waffles (Swaziland)
Best New International Act
Abigail Chams (Tanzania) Ajulicosta (Brazil) Amabbi (Brazil) Dlala Thukzin (South Africa) Dr Yaro (France) KWN (UK) Maglera Doe Boy (South Africa) Merveille (France) Odeal (UK) Shallipopi (Nigeria) WINNER: TxC (South Africa)
BET Her
“Beautiful People” — Mary J. Blige “Blackbiird” — Beyonce feat. Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy & Reyna Roberts “Bloom” — Doechii “Burning” — Tems “Defying Gravity” — Cynthia Erivo feat. Ariana Grande WINNER: “Heart of a Woman” — Summer Walker “Hold On” — Tems “In My Bag” — Flo & GloRilla
Best Movie
Bad Boys: Ride or Die Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F WINNER: Luther: Never Too Much Mufasa: The Lion King One of Them Days Rebel Ridge The Piano Lesson The Six Triple Eight
Best Actor
Aaron Pierce Aldis Hodge Anthony Mackie Colman Domingo WINNER: Denzel Washington Jamie Foxx Joey Bada$$ Kevin Hart Sterling K. Brown Will Smith
Best Actress
Andra Day Angela Bassett Coco Jones WINNER: Cynthia Erivo Keke Palmer Kerry Washington Quinta Brunson Viola Davis Zendaya
Young Stars Award
Akira Akbar WINNER: Blue Ivy Carter Graceyn “Gracie” Hollingsworth Heiress Harris Melody Hurd Thaddeus J. Mixson Tyrik Johnson VanVan
Sportswoman of the Year Award
A’ja Wilson WINNER: Angel Reese Claressa Shields Coco Gauff Dawn Staley Flau’jae Johnson Juju Watkins Sha’Carri Richardson Simone Biles
Russia launched large drone attacks on Kyiv and the southern port of Odesa on Tuesday morning, regional authorities said.
Timur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said that several districts of the capital were being attacked simultaneously, resulting in damage to buildings and fires.
Oleh Kiper, the governor of the Odesa region, said on Telegram that a “massive” drone attack struck an emergency medical building, a maternity ward and residential buildings. Kiper said that a 59-year-old man was killed and four others injured in the attack on residential buildings, but there were no casualties at the maternity ward.
Russian air defence systems destroyed 76 Ukrainian drones over a two-hour period on Monday, Russian media outlets reported.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces “continued to advance into the depths of the enemy’s defence” in Ukraine’s east-central region of Dnipropetrovsk and taken control of more territory.
Diplomacy
Russia and Ukraine on Monday carried out an exchange of prisoners of war aged under 25. The exchange followed talks between the sides earlier this month in Istanbul.
Transportation
Russia’s civil aviation authority said early on Tuesday that it had temporarily suspended flights at all four major airports serving Moscow in response to Ukrainian drone attacks.
Blake Lively initially launched a sexual harassment lawsuit against Justin Baldoni – who has strongly refuted the claims – after the pair worked together on It Ends With Us
Blake Lively was snapped at the Tribeca Artists Dinner in New York City on Monday(Image: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Blake Lively has spoken out for the first time since she was cleared in the $400million (£294million) defamation and extortion lawsuit filed by her It Ends with Us collaborator Justin Baldoni.
The actress’ powerful statement comes just hours after a judge dismissed Justin’s case. Blake, 37, said on Instagram: “Last week, I stood proudly alongside 19 organisations united in defending women’s rights to speak up for their safety.
“Like so many others, I’ve felt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit, including the manufactured shame that tries to break us. While the suit against me was defeated, so many don’t have the resources to fight back.”
Blake initially launched a sexual harassment lawsuit against Justin – who has strongly refuted the claims. However, he hit back with the $400million defamation claim against her, her publicist and husband Ryan Reynolds, all of whom have dismissed the accusations.
READ MORE: Blake Lively blasted for being ‘rude to staff’ in New York shop – ‘so entitled’
The pair worked together on film It Ends With Us
But after the judge chucked out Justin’s claims, a source close to the Los Angeles-born actress said: “Today’s opinion is a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit.”
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The row happened after Blake and Justin, 41, starred together in It Ends With Us, a romcom released last year. The alleged sexual harassment occurred during production for that film, which Justin directed.
But now, speaking after the dismissal, Blake added she was “more resolved than ever to continue to stand for every woman’s right to have a voice in protecting themselves, including their safety, their integrity, their dignity and their story”.
The Gossip Girl actress, who has four children with Ryan Reynolds, “With love and gratitude for the many who stood by me, many of you I know. Many of you I don’t. But I will never stop appreciating or advocating for you.”
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Last month, Blake’s pal Taylor Swift was dragged into the scandal when she was officially subpoenaed to appear as a witness. The pop star was delivered a legal notice by Justin’s lawyer Bryan Freedman – a decision which had been slammed by her team as a tactic to create clickbait.
In a move that appeared to please Blake and Taylor, it was confirmed Justin would no longer be calling on the Bad Blood hitmaker to appear as a witness. Bryan Freedman had claimed Blake had called on “her high-profile friends” including Taylor to “manipulate Justin at every turn.”
Mark Labbett, best known to The Chase fans as quizmaster “The Beast”, was reportedly spotted committing the faux pas during a date with a mystery woman while filming Celebs Go Dating
“The Beast” from The Chase, real name Mark Labbett, found himself in an amusing pickle on Celebs Go Dating after reportedly dozing off during a date.
Labbett, 58, well-known for his sharp intellect and straight-talking on the hit ITV quiz show, seemingly succumbed to sleepiness while the cameras captured the moment mid-date.
The latest series of Celebs Go Dating, which was filmed last month, saw an insider reveal that there wasn’t much spark between the quizzing legend and his suitor.
An anonymous tipster dished:
“Mark was yawning a lot and drifted off briefly. It was a bit of an awkward moment. It’s safe to say there wasn’t much of a spark between them.”
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Previously weighing as much as 29 stone, Mark Labbett tied the knot with second cousin Katie in 2014 but called it quits after six years.
He then dated TV host Hayley Palmer in 2023; however, the couple split after just one year together, reports the Express.
A source said: “Mark was yawning a lot and drifted off briefly. It was a bit of an awkward moment. It’s safe to say there wasn’t much of a spark between them.”(Image: IG)
Discussing his break up with Hayley, 43, Labbett confided in The Sun:
“She’s a lovely lady and I was very lucky to date her for a year, and as I said: it’s me, I got old.”
He continued: “There’s been no one since Hayley. I’m not saying there won’t be another one. But I’m certainly not looking.”
Delving into his love life, Labbett reminisced:
“I was single, not coincidentally, for a long, long time when I was a 29st maths teacher who knew it was quite hard to attract a partner then. So I’m quite comfortable without a partner.”
Mark’s representative quipped a witty retort when questioned about the drowsy date:
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“If his date was as boring as you have suggested, I’m surprised he didn’t take a pillow with him!”.
![Mohsin (left) and a cousin survey their fields while wondering whether farming has any future at all in India [Ismat Ara/ Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/DSC_0218-1749527590.jpg?w=696&ssl=1)
